Due to the increasing pressure of gun-control activists, in view of reports of ever increasing violence against humans, especially in the streets of America, there are increasing restrictions to the market sale, distribution or use of shotguns, rifles, revolvers, and the like weapons. Since weapons that are lethal for humans are usually lethal against animals, these increasing regulatory impediments also affect the field of game hunting. Fortunately, archery remains for the time being substantially unaffected by such heavy bureaucratic hassle, when comes the time to purchase such a weapon or to operate this weapon in the field. The fact that the effective range of archery bows, even with the high performance compound bows, is limited to less than 40 meters, may not be foreign to this situation.
Upon shooting any type of archery bow, the central stretch of the bowstring, as drawn to a full draw position, may, upon release of the bowstring to drive the arrow towards the target, shear in a whiplash-like effect the archer's forearm, and thus strike and chafe the same. Moreover, with the advent of high-performance bows, particularly the so-called "compound bow", the draw weight or string force of the bow has become substantially higher, wherein such bowstring contact with the forearm does represent a potential for significant bodily harm to the archer. Such an action may also cause the archer's arm to flinch or otherwise move, thus further thrusting the bow and diverting the arrow from the target.
To counteract such problems, sheet armguards have first been developed in the art. Such sheet armguards, which are often made from leather or leather-like resistant materials, are attached in particular to the interior face of the forearm. With such a sheet armguard, the string whiplash shearing action is borne solely by the free external surface of the sheet armguard.
The disadvantages of these sheet armguards are many. First, this sheet is not easy to properly secure to the forearm: if it is too tightly secured, blood circulation is hampered and the arm grows numb; and if it is too lightly secured, it tends to slide off from its operative position. Moreover, when the released bowstring strikes this sheet armguard, the arrow will be diverted from its original aim.
This is why there has been developed armguards that were integrally mounted to the bow frame. The attention of the reader is drawn in particular to the following two recent U.S. patents: U.S. Pat. No. 5,103,798 issued Apr. 14, 1992 to Michael MCGRAW and Aaron BAKER; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,137,008 issued Aug. 11, 1992 to Anthony TAYLOR. The problem with these armguards is that they are generally crude in design. In particular, the McGraw patent requires that a block member be anchored to the bow frame by bolt members, thus compromising the structural integrity of the expensive bow; moreover, the arm guard is simply a transverse substantially straight rod, which means that the forearm is not fully shielded since any accidental lateral offsetting of the releasing bowstring will be able to shear the forearm skin even in the presence of this arm guard rod.
The Taylor patent is an improvement in this regard, since it includes an armguard with a rectangular plate that is pivoted to a hinge bracket, the hinge bracket being in turn anchored to the bow frame. The rectangular plate is upwardly inclined, and defines therefore an extended planar surface that decreases the likelihood of accidental skin chafing due to the releasing bowstring. However, the straight shape of the Taylor armguard main embodiment makes it possible for the bowstring to get caught between the armguard and the archer arm. Also, the bowstring will probably wear out due to the friction between it and the armgard edges that are thin (and thus sharper) and are especially dangerous for the bowstring when the armguard is inclined (as illustrated in FIGS. 1, 4, 5, 6, 8 and 10) because the contact will then most likely occur between the bowstring and the edges. FIG. 9 shows another embodiment of the invention without an upwardly inclined armguard, but it is likely that the bowstring will slightly bend around the outwardly angled section 404 and wear out due to section 404 edges.